Hard Drive Problems/What do you do?

Do you use free anti-virus and malware software that is on the internet today or do you pay for it? If you use the free products or pay for them on the net who do you go with?

I currently have windows 8.1

I use to have windows 8. Now that I have windows 8.1 after the installation windows was asking me then to download and install windows 10. That's strange. What ever happened to windows 8.2 through 9.9?

At the moment I'm using Microsoft windows defender. It says it will protect me from the latest viruses and malware, but it's annoying how the software keeps expects me to keep manually updating it every few hours or at least every day.

How often do you download and install windows updates?

Answer"Do you use free anti-virus and malware software that is on the internet today or do you pay for it? If you use the free products or pay for them on the net who do you go with?"

Yes, I use free anti-virus (or no anti-virus). With Windows 7, I used no AV, but because Windows 8+ comes with it, I use what is included. I do not recommend no AV to the average user, but only to those very familiar with infection vectors and methodology. For tech-savvy users, Microsoft Security Essentials (Defender) is more than adequate. For non-savvy users, a quality AV is recommended. I recommend Symantec EndPoint Protection. Kaspersky and McAfee try to hard to get you to buy other products or are to complex. AVG is garbage :) Windows Defender should be updating automatically, not manually. EVERY AV should be updating 1-4 times per day, as new threats are discovered more often than that.

"I use to have windows 8. Now that I have windows 8.1 after the installation windows was asking me then to download and install windows 10. That's strange. What ever happened to windows 8.2 through 9.9?"

Windows 8 was the successor to Windows 7. Microsoft then moved to 8.1 for one (or two) of two reasons:

1) Windows 9 was skipped because many programmers used a wildcard identifier of "Windows 9*" to target software installations at Windows 95 and Windows 98; it would have also found Windows 9, making the software think it was installing on a supported OS, when in reality it was installing on an OS that was completely incompatible with the software,and/or

2) Microsoft decided (again) to move to a different model and cadence of OS releases; they may still be, but they may have been considering releasing OS's in a 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, etc. pattern. Then they perhaps jumped back to 10 to distance their new OS from the problems that initially plagued Windows 8; Windows 8.2 would not have seemed distanced enough.

Expertise

I can answer questions about server hardware RAID and general storage for servers and PC's - hard drive issues, troubleshooting, advice, specs, and information.
While some apparent drive/RAID array failures can be recovered, I can only provide advice/recommendations in the event of catastrophic data loss. I don't assist in actually recovering from this type of data loss on this forum.

Experience

I worked as an analyst in Dell server support for 2 years, and have since worked with many Dell PowerEdge servers. I am currently employed as IT Manager. I am currently ranked in the top 5 All-Time in Server Hardware and Hard Drives in a very popular and large forum similar to AllExperts.

Education/CredentialsI have a BS in Computer Science and have earned the following certifications: CompTIA Security+, A+, Project+; CIW Web Design, Database Specialist; Microsoft Windows 7; Dell DCSE Server. I am also an expert in Windows 7, Servers, and Hard Drives (I don't normally do XP - not because I don't know it inside and out, but because I have "retired" personal support for XP, and I want to see it die :)).